Should we or should we not....I feel like i'm having a nervous breakdown

[dashpt]

Firstly thank you for your time in reading my post.

A year and a half ago all was well my credit was finally in the 700+ and i was able to buy a house, i still had money left from saving for down payment, then my husband and i decided that since he's a truck driver he would take out a truck and start driving for him self through contracts with owner operator companies. well a few months after doing that we realized the cost was way more than we could mange, with the fuel and insurance cost, truck payment and all the other expenses it wasn't going to work, we didnt even break even as the pay per load was less than the cost to carry each load, so we decided to take our loss and go back to things the way they were until we were better able to go that route....of course we still had all the fuel cost on our credit cards and the company he was operationg for did'nt refund him the money they held back for him...over 10k, they said he signed a contract that if he stopped working with them before the one year is up then that money belonged to them...then he had to return the truck and again the truck company said he defaulted on the contract so he had to pay them what the contract said he has to pay...well all those fees we put on our credit cards between the both of us.

Now before we did all of that we went on a stupid timeshare trip and after 6 hours of a sales man drilling us and making us feel so bad we bought a worthless timeshare for 15k, we still have not used the thing but have been paying on it evry month and it seems the interest is so high that the principal isn't going down....so now we have over 50k debted between the timeshare, credit cards, medical bills and othe misc.....i have 68k in student loans that can't be discharged and i have my 20k car loan , by the way its the only mean of transportation for our family.

we had 11k saved between the both of us that we wouldnt touch as that was to be used if anything happens in the house or one of us lose our job then it would help us out....now to add insult to injury, my husband is still not a US citizen but he's here legally and we have been paying thousand s of dollars since 2012 to have his immigartion papers complete and everytime we take one step foward we get knocked two steps backwards, in april of this year we got a letter that after 8/31 (which is when this greencard expire) his benefit of working will terminate because we missed an appoinmnet with immigration, mind you we never got the letter, so we had to pay 3k to our lawyer to address that, however we have no update so as far as we know after 08/31 the only income that will be in our household will be mind and my net income can only pay the mortgage, car note, and the utilities plus food...($1690).  As of now we pay 1836.92 in credit card, timeshare and student loan monthly.

we had stop saving and was dumping all our cash (after paying home bills) into paying down the debts and had stopped using the cards but its now getting to much and with me alone working i cant do it. Plus i just had a surgery in may 26 and still having many doc visits with copays and co insurances.

can we file BK and do you think they will take the cash we have saved up? 

i dont have much equity in the home yet less than my state exemption amount.

we still have to continue to pay the immigration lawyer to file different request for my husband so we will have to go into that 11k and if we dont pay we have no help and no help means my family gets split up.

I usually withdraw money from our accounts to buy groceries and clothes shopping for my kid, will they look at my withdraws? I have to buy food and stuff plus i have to do back to school shopping.

Any advice???

P.S. my husband came here legally as we started the immigration process from he was in his home country, the laws have simply changed during the process and processing times have being extended and we missed an important appointment date....

My signiture at the buttom is not updated....card amounts is incorrect.

[Anonymous]

I would possibly look at talking with a lawyer.  They would be the best one to advise you on what you should do.

[Anonymous]

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@dashpt wrote:

can we file BK and do you think they will take the cash we have saved up? 

i dont have much equity in the home yet less than my state exemption amount.

we still have to continue to pay the immigration lawyer to file different request for my husband so we will have to go into that 11k and if we dont pay we have no help and no help means my family gets split up.

I usually withdraw money from our accounts to buy groceries and clothes shopping for my kid, will they look at my withdraws? I have to buy food and stuff plus i have to do back to school shopping.

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Assuming you haven't previously filed, you can always file bankruptcy! Whether or not you will benefit from it is another question. 

Whether your cash will be taken away depends on if you're able to exempt it or not. Research your state's exemption list and determine if there's a wildcard available for you to use. Often this is the unused home equity exemption, but it varies by state.

Regarding cash withdrawals, I would keep records of how cash withdrawals were spent (e.g. keep receipts). Alternatively, using a debit card for grocery purchases may eliminate this issue. 

As far as other suggestions, there are too many variables to give you highly personalized advice. As already suggested, a bankruptcy attorney will be better able to assist. Some of the things I would look into are:

- Are you filing jointly? If not, do you live in a community property state where this may be recommended?

- Do you have any argument for attempting to get your student loan debt discharged?

- Is your car in good working order? Is it upside down? How will you handle this debt in bankruptcy? (reaffirm, redeem, surrender?)

- Is a second card needed for your family? Would it make sense to use the cash to purchase a second car? Can you exempt this? (Check with an attorney before converting non-exempt assets into exempt assets)

- Have you transferred money to family in the past year, or other creditors in the past few months that a trustee may want to reverse?

That's just from the top of my head. Meet with a few attorneys. at  least 2-3. Surely some additional topics will come up that will give you a better sense of whether bankruptcy is the right thing to do, and what you may need to prepare for.